Beth BrintBut rather than overshadow their historical research, the experience of Covid has in fact had a knock on effect on the Catching Stories project by bringing people’s past experiences of fatal infectious diseases back to the surface. O’Carroll, who is the director of the Cork Folklore Project, has drawn on the folklore archives to find personal poignant memories of past epidemics. She says that it is fascinating to see how infectious diseases shaped people’s lives and memories. Brint says that before Covid, people had forgotten that these diseases could be killer diseases and that in the 1940s, around 1,000 children died every year in Ireland from diseases such as whooping cough, measles, diphtheria, polio and TB. The Catching Stories website explains how measles remains one of the world’s most contagious diseases as one case of the measles can infect 12-18 unvaccinated people.

Source: The Irish Times May 27, 2021 05:01 UTC